Peter Mandelson is optimistic

A piece of (most­ly) puffery from the Com­mis­sion­er prais­ing Europe as a ¬¥laboratory¬¥of trade lib­er­al­iza­tion (you didn¬¥t know?)and call­ing on mid­dle income devel­op­ing coun­tries (read Brazil, India, Korea, Mex­i­co, Chi­na) to make more con­ces­sions to match the EU. No news here. No progress either. bq. Why, then, are we mov­ing with so many fits and starts towards December’s key WTO min­is­te­r­i­al con­fer­ence in Hong Kong? Because open­ing mar­kets unleash­es resis­tance to change — and because many coun­tries still exhib­it an unhealthy brinks­man­ship, look­ing for oth­ers to “pay” into the trade round before com­mit­ting any­thing them­selves to the table. If you want to find “resistence to change” on mar­ket access, look no fur­ther than the beam in your own eye, Com­mis­sion­er. Look, for exam­ple, at “your own statements”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e897bf4c-b687-11d9-aebd-00000e2511c8.html on gar­ment imports last week.

Peter Gallagher

Peter Gallagher is student of piano and photography. He was formerly a senior trade official of the Australian government. For some years after leaving government, he consulted to international organizations, governments and business groups on trade and public policy.

He teaches graduate classes at the University of Adelaide on trade research methods and the role of firms in trade and growth and tweets trade (and other) stuff from @pwgallagher